Journey to the Virtual World

Monthly Archives: January 2015

Before playing with the software, I recommend that you review the powerpoint files first. You will find them listed under Resources in this page. The slides (in PDF format) is not based on the vRealize Operations 6.0 release, but it still contains a lot of useful information. It will be useful for you to read them before reading my blog, as mine is based on the 6.0 release.

With a management pack, we certainly expect deeper visibility. There are many things that a VMware admin would love to see from their storage. Often, all they know is the LUNs. What’s backing up those LUNs are not exposed. For example, on the following screenshot you can see that it shows the number of systems I have. For each system, it shows the NetApp aggregate, volume, etc. The Environment tab shows the relationship. Notice I selected a Datastore. The VMs are highlighted, but the LUN is not. Can you guess why?

You are right, it’s an NFS. I have 4 datastores, and 1 of them is an NFS.

I like the way it’s structured like the above. It’s easy for me to understand the structure, hierarchy and dependancy. You can even see the VM in the datastore, as shown below.

On the screen below, I clicked a LUN. All the associated Datastores, VM, etc are shown. If your Datastores and LUN are not mapped 1:1, they will be visible here. Relevant information is also shown if you do a mouse-over on an object.

If you click the Map sub tab, you get something like this. This is another visualisation, which some of you may like. Personally, I’d like to see the volume put under the Aggregate, not at the same level.

You might be wondering, where are the disks? It’s storage after all 🙂 Well, they are now shown. I did not know that the default setting does not include Disk.

What you need to do is to go the Advanced Settings, as shown below, and choose the collection you want. I set mine to all as you can see below.

I like the screen below. It’s one of the default dashboards that come with it. It gives me a good overall summary. I do not have the performance data, which I’m checking with the folks at Blue Medora.

My first impression is this delivers the visibility that VMware admin often do not have access too. Cool stuff!

I shared earlier that the configuration of a management pack basically involves connecting it to a source provider. In the case of Blue Medora NetApp, you need to connect to a DFM server (OnCommand Unified Manager). The configuration is pretty straight forward, as you can see below.

If you are curious about the Advanced Settings, here is what it looks like, with its default settings. I did not change anything as I’m quite happy with it. I want both Metadata and Performance data. Notie the Disk Collection is off. Disk here means the physical spindles in the array.

And that’s it.

Now, you should also configure Licensing, as it’s not a free product. If you do not apply it, it works but all the dashboard is watermark. Blue Medora has given me evaluation key, so I’m going to configure it. Go to the Licensing screen in vRealize Operations.

Add the key provided. It’s a long one, so the best is just copy-paste. I had to hide the key. Click the Validate button, and it would show you the details like below.

After you add the key, you need to assign it to the Management Pack. Follow the screenshot below.

Click on key you just added. In my case, it’s not a permanent licence, so the type is Temporary.

The Blue Medora NetApp is applied per NetApp array. Since I have 2 arrays, I need to assign to both. The good thing is it automatically selected the objects. Notice the Objects to always include shows 2 items., which are my arrays. Nice!

Click Next button and you got the screen below, which is just a summary.

vRealize Operations 6 introduces a concept called Management Pack. It was called Adapter in version 5. The Management Pack brings many enhancement compared to Adapter, so the steps to install and configure naturally differ to version 6. I will show 2 examples here:

Michael White, yes that famous blogger who gives you Notes from Michael, has also published a set of installation. He covers the Log Insight Management Pack here. As you can see below, I’ve already got the Log Insight management pack installed. I will give you example for NSX and Blue Medora.

First step is to upload the “.pak” file, which is the same concept you know in vCenter Operations 5.x version.

Once uploaded (which should be fast, as it’s not a big file), you get the screen below. In this case, I uploaded the management pack for NSX.

Installation looks like the screen below. This can take minutes. It will give you progress, and at the end you see Completed. Click the Finish button to close the dialog box.

And that’s all! The next step is configuration, which varies from one management pack to another. Generally, it’s about connecting to a data provider, such as NSX Manager, NetApp DFM Server or vCenter.

In the case for NSX, it’s about connecting to the NSX Manager. You need to supply the vCenter server that the NSX Manager is mapped to, not the vCenter where the NSX Manager VM is running.

For credential, you need to supply both for vCenter and NSX Manager.

And that’s it!

So now let’s do for Blue Medora NetApp management pack. Again, we start by uploading the .pak file. From the file you can see the version number.

The usual installation progress is shown. Notice the steps are basically similar with other management pack.

As expected, we now have it. The screen below shows that I’ve got both NSX and Blue Medora installed. I’m going to configure Blue Medora, which is on the next post.